583 research outputs found
Investigation of the Fundamental Reliability Unit for Cu Dual-Damascene Metallization
An investigation has been carried out to determine the fundamental reliability unit of copper dual-damascene metallization. Electromigration experiments have been carried out on straight via-to-via interconnects in the lower metal (M1) and the upper metal (M2), and in a simple interconnect tree structure consisting of straight via-to-via line with an extra via in the middle of the line (a "dotted-I"). Multiple failure mechanisms have been observed during electromigration testing of via-to-via Cu interconnects. The failure times of the M2 test structures are significantly longer than that of identical M1 structures. It is proposed that this asymmetry is the result of a difference in the location of void formation and growth, which is believed to be related to the ease of electromigration-induced void nucleation and growth at the Cu/SiâNâ interface. However, voids were also detected in the vias instead of in the Cu lines for some cases of early failure of the test lines. These early failures are suspected to be related to the integrity and reliability of the Cu via. Different magnitudes and directions of electrical current were applied independently in two segments of the interconnect tree structure. As with Al-based interconnects, the reliability of a segment in this tree strongly depends on the stress conditions of the connected segment. Beyond this, there are important differences in the results obtained under similar test conditions for Al-based and Cu-based interconnect trees. These differences are thought to be associated with variations in the architectural schemes of the two metallizations. The absence of a conducting electromigration-resistant overlayer in Cu technology allows smaller voids to cause failure in Cu compared to Al. Moreover, the Si₃N₄ overlayer that serves as an interlevel diffusion barrier provides sites for easy nucleation of voids and also provides a high diffusivity path for electromigration. The results reported here suggest that while segments are not the fundamental reliability unit for circuit-level reliability assessments for Al or Cu, vias, rather than trees, might be the appropriate fundamental units for the assessment of Cu reliability.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA
Length Effects on the Reliability of Dual-Damascene Cu Interconnects
The effects of interconnect length on the reliability of dual-damascene Cu metallization have been investigated. As in Al-based interconnects, the lifetimes of Cu lines increase with decreasing length. However, unlike Al-based interconnects, no critical length exists, below which all Cu lines are Ăąimmortalâ. Furthermore, we found multi-modal failure statistics for long lines, suggesting multiple failure mechanisms. Some long Cu interconnect segments have very large lifetimes, whereas in Al segments, lifetimes decrease continuously with increasing line length. It is postulated that the large lifetimes observed in long Cu lines result from liner rupture at the bottom of the vias, which allows continuous flow of Cu between the two bond pads. As a consequence, the average lifetimes of short lines and long lines can be higher than those of lines with intermediate lengths.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA
MSSM Higgs-Boson Production at Hadron Colliders with Explicit CP Violation
Gluon fusion is the main production mechanism for Higgs bosons with masses up
to several hundred GeV in collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We
investigate the effects of the CP-violating phases on the fusion process
including both the sfermion-loop contributions and the one-loop induced
CP-violating scalar-pseudoscalar mixing in the minimal supersymmetric standard
model. With a universal trilinear parameter assumed, every physical observable
involves only the sum of the phases of the universal trilinear parameter
and the higgsino mass parameter . The phase affects the lightest
Higgs-boson production rate significantly through the neutral Higgs-boson
mixing and, for the masses around the lightest stop-pair threshold, it also
changes the production rate of the heavy Higgs bosons significantly through
both the stop and sbottom loops and the neutral Higgs-boson mixing.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures. Some references and comments added. Typos
corrected. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Melting of Charge/Orbital Ordered States in NdSrMnO: Temperature and Magnetic Field Dependent Optical Studies
We investigated the temperature ( 15 290 K) and the magnetic
field ( 0 17 T) dependent optical conductivity spectra of a
charge/orbital ordered manganite, NdSrMnO. With variation
of and , large spectral weight changes were observed up to 4.0 eV. These
spectral weight changes could be explained using the polaron picture.
Interestingly, our results suggested that some local ordered state might remain
above the charge ordering temperature, and that the charge/orbital melted state
at a high magnetic field (i.e. at 17 T and 4.2 K) should be a three
dimensional ferromagnetic metal. We also investigated the first order phase
transition from the charge/orbital ordered state to ferromagnetic metallic
state using the - and % -dependent dielectric constants . In
the charge/orbital ordered insulating state, was positive and
. With increasing and , was
increased up to the insulator-metal phase boundaries. And then,
abruptly changed into negative and , which was
consistent with typical responses of a metal. Through the analysis of using an effective medium approximation, we found that the melting
of charge/orbital ordered states should occur through the percolation of
ferromagnetic metal domains.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.
Density functional method for nonequilibrium electron transport
We describe an ab initio method for calculating the electronic structure,
electronic transport, and forces acting on the atoms, for atomic scale systems
connected to semi-infinite electrodes and with an applied voltage bias. Our
method is based on the density functional theory (DFT) as implemented in the
well tested Siesta approach (which uses non-local norm-conserving
pseudopotentials to describe the effect of the core electrons, and linear
combination of finite-range numerical atomic orbitals to describe the valence
states). We fully deal with the atomistic structure of the whole system,
treating both the contact and the electrodes on the same footing. The effect of
the finite bias (including selfconsistency and the solution of the
electrostatic problem) is taken into account using nonequilibrium Green's
functions. We relate the nonequilibrium Green's function expressions to the
more transparent scheme involving the scattering states. As an illustration,
the method is applied to three systems where we are able to compare our results
to earlier ab initio DFT calculations or experiments, and we point out
differences between this method and existing schemes. The systems considered
are: (1) single atom carbon wires connected to aluminum electrodes with
extended or finite cross section, (2) single atom gold wires, and finally (3)
large carbon nanotube systems with point defects.Comment: 18 pages, 23 figure
Associated charged Higgs and W boson production in the MSSM at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
We investigate the viability of observing charged Higgs bosons (H^+/-)
produced in association with W bosons at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, using
the leptonic decay H^+ -> tau^+ nu_tau and hadronic W-decay, within different
scenarios of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with both real
and complex parameters. Performing a parton level study we show how the
irreducible Standard Model background from W+2 jets can be controlled by
applying appropriate cuts and find that the size of a possible signal depends
on the cuts needed to suppress QCD backgrounds and misidentifications. In the
standard maximal mixing scenario of the MSSM we find a viable signal for large
tan(beta) and intermediate H^+/- masses (~m_t) when using optimistic cuts
whereas for more pessimistic ones we only find a viable signal for very large
tan(beta) (>~50). We have also investigated a special class of MSSM scenarios
with large mass-splittings among the heavy Higgs bosons where the cross-section
can be resonantly enhanced by factors up to one hundred, with a strong
dependence on the CP-violating phases. Even so we find that the signal after
cuts remains small except for small masses (~< m_t) with optimistic cuts.
Finally, in all the scenarios we have investigated we have only found small
CP-asymmetries.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figures, version to appear in Euro. Phys. J.
Probing R-parity violating models of neutrino mass at the Tevatron via top Squark decays
We have estimated the limiting branching ratio of the R-parity violating
(RPV) decay of the lighter top squark, \tilde t_1 \ar l^+ d ( or
and d is a down type quark of any flavor), as a function of top squark
mass(\MST) for an observable signal in the di-lepton plus di-jet channel at
the Tevatron RUN-II experiment with 2 fb luminosity. Our simulations
indicate that the lepton number violating nature of the underlying decay
dynamics can be confirmed via the reconstruction of \MST. The above decay is
interesting in the context of RPV models of neutrino mass where the RPV
couplings () driving the above decay are constrained to be
small (\lsim 10^{-3} - 10^{-4} ). If is the next lightest super
particle - a theoretically well motivated scenario - then the RPV decay can
naturally compete with the R-parity conserving (RPC) modes which also have
suppressed widths. The model independent limiting BR can delineate the
parameter space in specific supersymmetric models, where the dominating RPV
decay is observable and predict the minimum magnitude of the RPV coupling that
will be sensitive to Run-II data. We have found it to be in the same ballpark
value required by models of neutrino mass, for a wide range of \MST. A
comprehensive future strategy for linking top squark decays with models of
neutrino mass is sketched.Comment: 28 pages, 14 Figure
A Study of Cosmic Ray Secondaries Induced by the Mir Space Station Using AMS-01
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a high energy particle physics
experiment that will study cosmic rays in the to range and will be installed on the International Space Station
(ISS) for at least 3 years. A first version of AMS-02, AMS-01, flew aboard the
space shuttle \emph{Discovery} from June 2 to June 12, 1998, and collected
cosmic ray triggers. Part of the \emph{Mir} space station was within the
AMS-01 field of view during the four day \emph{Mir} docking phase of this
flight. We have reconstructed an image of this part of the \emph{Mir} space
station using secondary and emissions from primary cosmic rays
interacting with \emph{Mir}. This is the first time this reconstruction was
performed in AMS-01, and it is important for understanding potential
backgrounds during the 3 year AMS-02 mission.Comment: To be submitted to NIM B Added material requested by referee. Minor
stylistic and grammer change
Improved W boson mass measurement with the D0 detector
We have measured the W boson mass using the D0 detector and a data sample of
82 pb^-1 from the Tevatron collider. This measurement used W -> e nu decays,
where the electron is close to a boundary of a central electromagnetic
calorimeter module. Such 'edge' electrons have not been used in any previous D0
analysis, and represent a 14% increase in the W boson sample size. For these
electrons, new response and resolution parameters are determined, and revised
backgrounds and underlying event energy flow measurements are made. When the
current measurement is combined with previous D0 W boson mass measurements, we
obtain M_W = 80.483 +/- 0.084 GeV. The 8% improvement from the previous D0
measurement is primarily due to the improved determination of the response
parameters for non-edge electrons using the sample of Z bosons with non-edge
and edge electrons.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. D; 20 pages, 18 figures, 9 table
One-pot synthesis of nano-crystalline MCM-22
[EN] Nano-crystalline MCM-22 zeolite was synthesized in a one-pot procedure by the use of an organosilane (dimethyl-octadecyl-(3-trimethoxysilylpropyl)-ammonium chloride, TPOAC) in the zeolite synthesis gel. This crystal growth inhibition procedure introduced mesopores in the MCM-22 crystallites. The lower mechanical stability of the nano-crystalline MCM-22 zeolite compared with bulk MCM-22 can be countered to some extent by pillaring. The increased external surface of the microporous zeolite domains resulted in increased accessibility of the Bronsted acid sites, as followed from the better performance in liquid-phase benzene alkylation with propylene as compared with bulk MCM-22. The increased accessibility of the internal acid sites in Mo-loaded hierarchical MCM-22 was also evident from the improved benzene selectivity during methane aromatization. Silylation of hierarchical Mo/MCM-22 was detrimental for the catalytic performance in MDA. The nano-crystalline MCM-22 has physico-chemical and catalytic properties intermediate between those of MCM-22 and ITQ-2 with the benefit over ITQ-2 that it can be synthesized in a single step. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Funding from the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission through the Collaborative Project Next-GTL (agreement no 229183) and financial support by the Spanish Government-MINECO through "Severo Ochoa" (SEV 2012-0267), Consolider Ingenio 2010-Multicat (CSD2009-00050) and MAT2012-31657 are acknowledged. Marta E. Martinez Armero thanks MINECO for economical support through pre-doctoral fellowship for doctors training (BES-2013-066800). The authors thank B. Esparcia for technical assistance.Tempelman, CHL.; Portilla Ovejero, MT.; MartĂnez Armero, ME.; Mezari, B.; De Caluwe, NGR.; MartĂnez, C.; Hensen, EJM. (2016). One-pot synthesis of nano-crystalline MCM-22. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials. 220:28-38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2015.08.018S283822
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